All I want for Christmas is 1TW of solar deployed annually
Ambitious targets to deploy a terawatt of solar capacity per year are prompting debate over how far cheap photovoltaics can transform energy systems and wider economies. Commenters weigh solar’s rapidly falling costs and explosive growth against challenges like intermittency, limited grid-scale storage, land use, and the need for transmission upgrades, with some arguing that negative or near-free midday power will spur new business models and demand-shifting technologies. Others contend that without massive investment in storage and complementary sources such as wind, hydro, or nuclear, fossil fuels will remain essential for reliable baseload power, especially at night and in winter.
Economics of Solar and Negative Prices
- Several comments discuss “free” or negative-priced electricity when solar/wind oversupply hits current grids with limited storage.
- Disagreement on causes: some stress subsidies and legacy feed-in rules; others highlight inflexible thermal plants that are costly to ramp and thus accept negative prices.
- Inverters make solar curtailment trivial; thermal plants often cannot.
- Expectation that as storage and flexible demand scale, extreme negative prices will decline, though near-zero midday prices may remain common in high-solar systems.
- Time-of-use tariffs already pay consumers to use power during oversupply in some markets.
Intermittency, Storage, and Grid Operation
- Repeated concern: “what happens at night / in winter / during cloudy weeks?”
- Skepticism that current grid-scale batteries (often 2-hour systems) solve multi-day or seasonal issues; pumped hydro and CSP with thermal storage are cited as more promising but slow/limited.
- Others argue renewables still displace large amounts of fossil fuel even without full storage, and that demand-side flexibility (industrial load shifting, EVs, thermal storage) is underused.
- Some claim near-100% renewable grids are technically feasible with modest storage plus wind, transmission, and flexible demand; others say no large grid runs this way without major hydro or geothermal.
Solar Scale, Costs, and Growth
- Strong emphasis on exponential growth: hundreds of GW installed annually already, with production capacity expanding rapidly.
- Utility solar is framed as cheaper on “levelized cost” than new fossil or nuclear, though panel lifetimes (~30 years) and BOS/infrastructure refresh keep it from being “dirt cheap.”
- Some foresee growth slowing as cost reductions flatten; others think energy demand and new uses (e.g., synthetic fuels, chemicals) will keep growth high.
Nuclear vs Renewables
- Pro‑nuclear voices stress 24/7 baseload, winter reliability, high energy density, and low land use; they consider modern nuclear safe and waste volumes manageable.
- Critics respond that global nuclear capacity additions are tiny compared to yearly solar additions, with chronic cost overruns and long build times; they view nuclear as too slow/expensive to be central to decarbonization now.
- Some propose nuclear as a complement or “stopgap” while renewables and storage scale; others argue focus on nuclear effectively prolongs fossil fuel use.
Land Use and Environmental Externalities
- Concern that “seas of panels” will cover nature; counter-arguments show required area is a small fraction of land, and rooftops plus agrivoltaics can mitigate impacts.
- Externalities debated for all options: mining and waste for solar/wind and batteries; radioactive waste and accident risk for nuclear; CO₂, heavy metals, and climate damage for fossil fuels.
- Some worry about poorly understood long-term PV waste issues; others argue these are likely more manageable and localized than climate change.
Climate Impacts and Societal Adaptation
- Comments range from alarm (extinctions, migration crises, tipping points) to guarded optimism that humanity will “figure it out,” citing past successes like the Montreal Protocol.
- Jevons paradox is raised: cheaper energy may spur new energy-hungry uses, keeping demand high and requiring even more build-out.
- Ideas include using “absurd amounts” of cheap renewable energy for carbon removal and for synthetic hydrocarbons to replace fossil feedstocks.
Policy, Markets, and Innovation Opportunities
- Multiple posts highlight that political and regulatory choices (subsidies, nuclear regulation, grid rules, permitting) shape which technologies win more than pure engineering.
- Transmission build-out, rules enabling distributed generation and storage, and smarter tariffs are seen as crucial.
- Anticipated opportunities: arbitrage/storage, demand-shifting tech, vehicle-to-grid, hydrogen/ammonia production, and even fully “solar-powered” supply chains and factories.